Words of Light In Dark Times: An Interview with Dr. Soong-Chan Rah

I have a special treat for readers this week.  I am privileged to be able to present to you an audio interview which I conducted with Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, a Christian, theologian, and seminary professor who has applied systems thinking to the issues facing America and other First World societies, and to the response of the Christian Church to these present challenges. 

To access the interview, click here.  Then click on the speaker icon.

I have mentioned Dr. Rah in several previous posts.  Dr. Rah is the author of four published books: The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing The Church from Western Cultural Captivity, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice In Troubled Times., and Return to Justice: Six Movements That Reignited Our Contemporary Evangelical Conscience.  He also has an additional book which is about to go to press, which he mentions toward the end of the interview.

In the interview we briefly cover the reality of the hard ecological and economic limits now being faced by the industrialized world.  Then we begin to ask how the United States and the Global North in general have responded to these limits, focusing particularly on the response of the mainstream American church to an age of limits.  We discuss the pathology that arises in people who have enjoyed unjust privileges for a long time, and how that pathology is triggered when those privileges begin to run out.  I also ask Dr. Rah what Scripture passages he has been referring to in order to understand these days.

From there we discuss how real Christians should pray in these days, and how to avoid being sidetracked by searching for easy, yet false answers in our prayers.

Lastly, we ask what real Christians should do in these days.  And we briefly discuss the role of nonviolent struggle in our response.

About the audio: you will also get to witness (or more accurately, hear) my rather thumb-fingered approach to audio technology.  So you will hear that the audio actually begins in the middle of my introduction to Dr. Rah, and the presentation of my first question to him.  I tried fixing this by recording a new introduction, then I tried downloading some free and open source audio editing software to splice the new intro onto the main body of the interview.  After a rather long bit of frustration, I became convinced that I did well to avoid a career in TV or radio!  However, I can type (most of the time).  So I will give you the text of my first question, so that you may have a more complete picture of the interview.  Here is the text:

"These days are a time of confusion and distress for many people who had hoped that by the end of 2016, the people running things in our world might have moved in a more equitable direction than that which they have taken.  Many of us might be struggling to correctly understand these days, and may need help in our understanding, so that we can plot a right course of action.  In order to help us in our understanding, I am interviewing Dr. Rah, and will be asking him several questions under three general categories:

• How to Look At These Days
• How to Pray In These Days
• What To Do In These Days

"My first question is as follows: on an economic and ecological level, the industrialized world has begun to run into hard limits, as the resources needed to expand or even to maintain the global industrial economy have begun to dry up.  Individuals and societies can respond to this reality in many ways and on many levels.  How would you characterize the response of the United States so far?"